Companies are striving to find ways to connect electronic mobile devices to their enterprise computer systems. This is so that on-the-go employees can access information remotely from where the information is stored on enterprise computer systems. Thus, employees can manage their information no matter where they might be—as if they were at the office. Such capabilities can allow salespeople to work from the road, service technicians to look up parts while at a customer site, and other employees to work from home.
Similarly, some companies would like to allow end customers to access data from their enterprise computer systems, which are often times implemented using back-end computer systems. Such access may differentiate a company from its competitors, improve the customer experience, and lower costs for the company. For example, certain stores can allow a customer to search store inventory for an item of merchandise. This type of self-service improves the customer experience by allowing him or her to shop on his or her own terms at odd times of day, as well as lowers the need for salespeople, operators, and other staff.
Mobile device applications, commonly referred to as “apps,” are present on many smart phones and other electronic mobile communication devices. Depending on a type of app or the type of data used by an app, an app may need to connect and synchronize with different enterprise computer systems. Many enterprise computer systems may be supported by different back-end computer systems, which can vary for the application and the type of data. As such, different back-end enterprise systems may use different communication protocols and mechanisms to communicate data to devices. As such, different mobile computing devices running a variety of apps may encounter challenges for communicating with different back-end computer systems supporting an enterprise computer system.
In addition to the challenges in enabling communication between an app and a specific enterprise computing systems, security may become a major concern in allowing access to an enterprise's internal computer system. The differences in communication protocols supported between the mobile computing devices and the enterprise computer systems may further complicate managing security access for communications between mobile computing devices and enterprise computer systems. Different mechanisms may be implemented to ensure authentication of an application to access a particular enterprise computer system according to a proprietary security protocol. Some have attempted to address such compatibility issues for security by connecting off-the-shelf consumer mobile devices with companies' back-end enterprise systems. These devices may be configured with applications or operating systems configured to connect to an enterprise's network through special portals dedicated to communicate with back-end computer systems supporting an enterprise computer system.
Manufacturers of mobile devices, application developers, and enterprises' may benefit from more flexible and robust techniques for connecting mobile devices to an enterprise's back-end computer systems.